Reviews For All Forum Monsters in the Wall

Hi, I'd love some feedback on this story. Is there a plot?? Are the metaphors original? Do they make sense? Feedback would be much appreciated. I'm really not sure if it should be fiction or a memoir. It is based on real life events, but has obviously been fictionalised. Thank you for reading.A M Carroll 

   

Her shadow moves from behind the glass of the inside door. She keeps the door locked out of fear that they will come for her again. 

    'Is that you?' she asks.   

    'Yes, mum it's me.'   

    'Is it really you? How do I know it's you? What's the password?'    

   'Open Sesame!' I guess.    

   She unlocks the door. A smile lights up her gloomy face. ' I knew it was you.'  

   I step on a pile of unopened mail. No wonder she's not keeping her appointments. I set the shopping bags on the kitchen counter.   

    'No! Not there.' She quickly moves them. 'I don't like that part of the kitchen.'    

   A towel hangs over the tiny kitchen window. Empty tins, dented and slightly rusted, litter the worktop, along with crumpled and empty packets, spilled sugar, and used t-bags. A black rubbish bag, smelly and overflowing, is ready to topple over in the space where the fridge used to be.  The sitting room curtains are drawn and the heating is on full blast. She doesn't want to let in light or fresh air. Open curtains and windows mean they can see and hear her.  

    She makes me a cup of tea. I  sit on the bed-settee, which is never folded away, always the living room centrepiece ever since she became too  afraid to go into the bedroom. She sits beside me.  I want to put my arms around her and tell her I will keep her safe, but like a rubber band, I  only stretch so far. For too long, I've hoped the situation will improve. Since her relapse, I've hoped the family will help, but stigma has spun it’s web around her and keeps her trapped in isolation.  I've hoped the community mental health team will do more, but if she doesn't answer her door or attend her appointments they can’t do anything. Most of all, I've hoped that I can make her well.   

    'Thanks for getting me the shopping' She smiles. 'I just haven't been well enough to get to a shop.'    

   'But you're feeling better now? - and, you're taking your medication?'   

    'Yes, I'm taking my medication.' She laughs like I've told the funniest joke in the world.   

    Something hits my lips as I drink the cup of tea. She's left the t-bag in the cup. I get up, put it in the rubbish bag and see what I saw yesterday.    

   Yesterday, I walked up the path, past long grass, and knocked on her door, silent fury bled from her pores. She smoked cigarettes and told me about the voices. I went to the bathroom, searched the cabinet, but it was empty. While I was in the bathroom, she fought with the voices. I heard shouts and the sound of things smashing. When it stopped, I stumbled back into the living room, cigarette smoke floated through the air and up my nostrils; things crunched underfoot. Pieces of plates and cups were scattered across the floor. Tea-stains splattered the walls, looking eerily like blood.

    I began to clean up, put the broken crockery in the bin and that’s when I saw them. The unopened packets of medication. And now, today, she seems well, but tomorrow she might not be. The medication peers, almost sneers at me from the bin. I know what I have to do.   

     I go home, pick up the phone, put it back down again, pick it up, dial the number and hang up. I feel like my mouth is glued shut. I just cannot  bring myself to talk to them.  

     From the very first moment I was capable of thought, I was committed to my mother. She was like a beautiful sunrise on a dark morning. An enigma that simply had to be solved. She disappeared often throughout my childhood. Like a beautiful butterfly fluttering in the garden on a summers day she was gone too soon. When she reappeared she would tell me stories of cruel nurses injecting her like she was a laboratory rat.  Her bed on the psychiatric ward her cage. At home, she would shuffle around like a zombie due to the medication she was taking.  The loudest memory of all, the memory that bangs on my mind like an open door thudding in the wind, was when voices screamed from my bedroom walls. They got louder and louder as the walls moved slowly towards me, threatening to crush me. I hid under blankets, terrified. Next day, my mother had vanished. I was convinced that monsters inside the walls had taken her. If I had been a grown up, I would never have let them take her.   

    I know now that the monsters in the walls were not actual monsters inside the walls. They were the voices of the professionals involved in sectioning her that night; they were my childhood bogeymen. Now my only option is to call them.    After all, times have changed in psychiatric hospitals since the seventies and eighties. Haven't they? It's the 21st century now. They have better medications. Don't they? They treat vulnerable patients with dignity and respect now. At least I hope so. Recent scandals of disabled people and the elderly mistreated in care homes and hospitals doesn't exactly fill me with confidence; and, hearing about how little money is invested in mental health worries me.  But I cannot make her well all by myself.   

    I pick up the phone. I hear the ringing tone. I speak. First the doctor comes, then the social worker; calls are made, things are put in place. I am relieved to know that the days of a relative signing the paperwork are over. I don't have to sign on any dotted line.  

   We wander to my mother’s house , her home, her place of safety, and we gather outside. The distant figures of two policemen approach, the older one smiles sympathetically, the younger one can’t meet my eyes. We all stand together in awkward silence - me, two policemen, a social worker and a doctor; like quiet assassins we gather outside my mother's home. I  know what comes next. I don't want to be here to see it. If she struggles, they will have to sedate her.   

    I walk away into the darkness,  I can already hear her screams,  and I wish I could be in there with her to protect her from the butterfly snatchers and the zombie makers, but most of all, the monsters in the wall.   Then a thought smashes into me.  I can't make her well all by myself, but I can't abandon her to them; what I can do is make sure they treat her with dignity and respect and be there to support her on the journey back to recovery.  The moon shines bright across the night sky, a light left on in a dark place.